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How to type æ ø å (Danish letters) on an English keyboard

Type Danish æ, ø, å and their capitals on a US keyboard. Compare Mac, Windows and Linux options, then see how Typeet restores missing letters.

Danish needs æ, ø and å, with Æ, Ø and Å for capitals. These letters occur in ordinary words such as brød, mælk and på. If you moved to Denmark with a US laptop, or use English keys for work, the letters are still available in your operating system.

Treat all three as letters. Æ is not simply an A with an accent, and Ø is not the mathematical empty-set symbol. Use the real characters in customer messages and names. A borrowed word such as café can also need an acute accent.

On a Mac

Press and hold, or use Option

Hold a for æ or å, or o for ø, and select the letter. Use Shift for the capitals. Menus are slow for long text and do not work in every app.

On the standard US layout, use these Option shortcuts:

All three lowercase shortcuts produce a letter immediately. There is no second vowel to type. These combinations refer to the standard US layout, not the Danish layout. Use Keyboard Viewer to check your layout. Apple's accent guide explains the menu and dead-key methods.

Add an input source or pick a character

Open System Settings → Keyboard → Text Input → Edit and add a Danish input source. Danish assigns the extra letters to keys near L and P. US punctuation labels no longer describe what those keys type. Check the active source when you return to English.

Character Viewer inserts letters, but interrupts typing. Unicode Hex Input is another built-in input source: select it, hold Option and enter 00F8 for ø. Codes are hard to remember.

On Windows

United States-International and national layouts

In Windows 11, open Settings → Time & language → Language & region. Open your language's options, add a keyboard and pick United States-International. Switch layouts with Windows + Space.

United States-International puts these letters on the right Alt key, also called AltGr: AltGr + Z gives æ, AltGr + L gives ø and AltGr + W gives å. Add Shift for Æ, Ø and Å. Unlike the Danish layout, the US letter and punctuation keys stay where they are.

The layout also turns quote and accent keys into dead keys, which wait for another character. To enter a literal quote, follow it with Space. A Danish layout gives the letters their own keys, but changes US punctuation.

Alt codes and character tools

Hold Alt, type the code on the numeric keypad, then release Alt:

æ 0230; ø 0248; å 0229; Æ 0198; Ø 0216; Å 0197.

Keep the leading zero and enable Num Lock if needed. These are Windows Western character codes, not universal Unicode shortcuts. The top number row will not work; many laptops lack a number pad.

Search Start for Character Map to copy a letter. The touch keyboard also offers accented choices when you hold a letter on screen; its choices depend on the active layout. Both interrupt typing.

In Word for Windows, type 00F8, then press Alt + X for ø. Word also has Insert → Symbol. These methods do not work in every app. Microsoft's character-code guide lists codes and their limits.

On Linux

Add a Danish layout in GNOME's Keyboard settings or KDE's keyboard layout settings. US international variants keep the main US letters and add dead keys or AltGr combinations. Check the variant's layout display. National layouts move punctuation; dead keys change quotes.

Assign an unused key to Compose in your desktop's keyboard options, then press these keys in order:

Compose, a, e gives æ; Compose, /, o gives ø; Compose, o, a gives å; Compose, A, E gives Æ.

Compose needs setup and several keystrokes per letter. In GTK apps, Ctrl + Shift + U, then 00F8 and Enter enters ø. This Unicode method is not universal across Linux apps. Copy letters from GNOME Characters or KDE's KCharSelect if installed. KDE Plasma 6.7 and later can also show a press-and-hold menu when Plasma Keyboard is the virtual keyboard.

Write Danish with the US layout

Typeet restores missing letters when you finish a word with a space or punctuation. You keep the English US layout and enter the word without its special letters. For example:

You type:

Kan du kobe brod og maelk pa vej hjem?

Typeet writes:

Kan du købe brød og mælk på vej hjem?

You type:

Pa lordag korer vi til mormor, vil du med?

Typeet writes:

På lørdag kører vi til mormor, vil du med?

It checks Danish and English word-frequency lists and uses nearby words to choose a spelling. It does not fix typing errors or grammar. Check names and words with several spellings.

On held-out Tatoeba sentences, Typeet added 98.2% of missing letters for Danish. In that test, 99.7% of all words were correct and 100% of English words stayed unchanged. Its list contains 100,207 words. Results vary. A separate test of Eventyr og historier by H.C. Andersen used 368,236 words with the special letters removed and got 99.1% of words right.

Press Backspace immediately after an unwanted fix to undo it. After ten undos of the same word, Typeet leaves that word alone. To switch to another spelling just after a word, press Option + Backspace on Mac or Ctrl + Backspace on Windows and Linux.

Typeet works in mail, Slack, Word, browsers and other apps. Terminals and password managers are excluded by default; exclude more in Settings › Apps. Nothing you type is stored or sent anywhere. Processing stays on your computer.

Typeet requires macOS 13 or later, Windows 10 or later, or Linux (.deb and .rpm packages, as an IBus input method on Wayland and X11). On Mac it asks for Accessibility permission on first launch. It is free for 14 days, then costs $19 once. Regional prices can be lower.

Questions

How do I type ø on an English keyboard?

On a US Mac layout, press Option + O. On Windows with US-International, press AltGr + L; with a number pad, Alt + 0248 also works. On Linux, a configured Compose key followed by slash and lowercase o gives ø.

Can I use aa instead of å?

Aa remains part of some names, so keep the spelling its owner uses. For an ordinary word that takes å, enter å in finished text.

Can I write English in the same message?

Yes. Typeet checks both languages and the sentence. Undo an unwanted fix with Backspace immediately afterward.